[TUHS] Re: SVR2 on the PDP-11? SVR3?

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 2:14 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Does anyone know if there are any surviving examples of SVR2 for the
> PDP-11? Various SVR2 manuals still make mention of the assembler, linker,
> etc. and the pdp11 variable is present in machid(1)*. And on the note of
> the later years of the PDP-11, was there any hope for SVR3 on the PDP? I
> presume the introduction of demand paging was the end of things but I would
> be curious for anyone's recollections on the final years of System V on the
> PDP-11.
>
> - Matt G.
>

BTW Sometime around this time, Summit starts to stop full support for the
11.  I want to say that by then, getting anything for the 11 out of the
Bell system was difficult.  I do remember that by SVR3 time, the only thing
you could get officially from Summit was the 3B/WE32000-based tape as the
3B5 was the official reference for UNIX.

IIRC SVR1 and SVR2 the Vax was the reference implementation, and with R1,
you could still order a PDP-11 tape; but frankly, I've forgotten exactly
when they stopped but I seem to remember not for SVR2.  I personally had
lost interest in the PDP-11 from AT&T by then.   And if I could have
obtained a SVR3 tape for VAX, most of the workstation folks like me would
have ordered it, because we almost all had an 11/750 [usually running a
flavor of BSD] around.   The running joke was that you knew you own UNIX
port was solid wen you could run UUCP and sendmail for you companies
external gateway.   IIRC as a for instance, Eric Fair was running a Vax at
Apple since Apple's own UNIX product could not do it.

BTW: With SVR4 the Intel 386 family was the reference.   AT&T had bought
NCR by then, and NCR had flipped to it's 'Seven Layer Stragety' which was
Intel ISA across each level and had kill off all their Motorola-based
products.  After the purchase with the NCR folks running AT&T's computer
division, the 3B series began its demise even for AT&T and the RBOC.  I was
an external consultant for them at that point, and I may even have a memo
from the Chief Architect (Lee Hovel - my boss/client in those days) that
killed it [I actually the analysis for him that killed off the 88000
machines - which made my name mud in Columbia, SC where there had developed
it - but I was not part of the 3B stuff].



> P.S. *interesting little 3B5 side note, found as I was checking references
> that machid(1) in the "System V" branded manual from the initial System V
> commercial release mentions the pdp11, vax, and u3b machines, the latter
> being the 3B20S. However, the "Release 5.0" branded manuals also make
> mention of the u3b5 machine, the 3B5.
>
The 20S was a bit larger than a Vax 11/780 - just half of the 20D [duplex],
which was developed to control the ESS#5 and was logic -- I don't remember
what family, but likely 74S series. So it was traditional 19" racks and 48v
telco-style power.   While the 3B5 used a WE32000 chip as a 'desktop'
system and plugged into a standard NEMA 110v jack.
ᐧ

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